We knocked twice, and no one came.

Here was a plight! Locked out at this hour of night, with a half-dead child in our charge! "Knock again," said Jack.
I _did_ knock again, a wonderful knock, that must have startled the cats for a mile round, and this time it called up the spirit we wished for.
There was a flicker of a candle through the keyhole, and a slipshod footstep in the hall, which gave us great satisfaction.

Mrs Nash opened the door.
At the sight of our burden, the abuse with which she was about to favour us faded from her lips as she gazed at us in utter amazement.
"Why, what's all this?
eh, you two?
What's this ?" she demanded.
"I'll tell you," said Jack, entering with his burden; "but I say, Mrs Nash, can't you do something for him?
Look at him!" Mrs Nash was a woman, and whatever her private opinion on the matter generally may have been; she could not resist this appeal.

She took the little fellow out of Jack's arms, and carried him away to her own kitchen, where, after sponging his bruised face and forehead, and giving him a drop of something in a teaspoon, and brushing back his matted hair and loosing his ragged jacket at the neck, she succeeded in restoring him to his senses.

It was with a thrill of relief that we saw his eyes open and a shade of colour come into his grimy cheeks.
"What have you been doing to him ?" said Mrs Nash.
"He was being knocked about," said Jack, modestly, "and Batchelor and I got him away." "And what are you going to do with him ?" inquired Mrs Nash, who, now that her feminine offices were at an end, was fast regaining her old crabbedness.
"He'd better go to bed," said Smith.